Chapter 14 – Luke
“I’m so fucking sorry, man.” Kurt grips my shoulder and pulls me into a half hug. “The world lost a legend, and those won’t be easy shoes for you to fill.”
I tense when his body collides with mine, but then I relax into his embrace just a tiny bit. There are dozens of people, hunters like me, gathered in the grassy field behind the Academy mortuary to pay their respects to my adoptive father, the legendary vampire hunter Ivan Morozov. But of all of them, Kurt and his twin brother Jake are the only ones who come close to understanding how I feel at this moment.
“Thanks, bro.” I give Kurt a tight smile and a nod. “Means a lot for you and Jake to fly all the way from Slovakia to be here.”
“Wouldn’t leave you alone through all this. Shit, the way the Academy was freaking out the other day, we all thought you were dead too.”
“I should be.”
“Don’t talk like that, man. You’re a survivor.”
Kurt has black eyes that sit in the middle of his pale, round face like shiny onyx. The Academy let him grow out his black hair, and he has it tied in a pony behind his head, a lot like mine. A silver chain hangs around his neck, the small cross just barely visible between the unbuttoned front of his heavy, well-worn trench coat. Kurt is a few years younger than me, but he’s been through the ringer, too, and has the chops to be an amazing hunter.
Surrounded by all these tight-ass hunters who didn’t know Ivan, don’t know me, or what it’s like to lose someone who wasn’t just your mentor but your family and your whole way of life, Kurt is a breath of fresh air. Thankfully, hunter funerals are more sterile affairs; there were no heartfelt speeches or keynote speakers, just an Academy official who droned on about Ivan’s many, many accomplishments over his career as a hunter before tossing his ashes to the wind and leaving me with a tiny bottle as a keepsake.
Clouds loom in the sky, darkening the morning, and the airy scent of incoming rain clears my senses for the first time in days. Ivan is dead and gone, officially dealt with by Academy standards, so why hasn’t this thick ball of fuckery disappeared from my chest yet?
The ceremony is over now, and thank God for that. Everyone’s done the rounds and paid their respects, finally hurrying away before the first drops of rain fall like they’re going to melt on contact. But they leave me in peace.
There’s no tombstone for Ivan, no engraved resting place in a tomb of hunters. There will be a memorialized resting place for him at the Academy up north and likely one at the Russian HQ where he originated, but most of us don’t get that unless we make a mark on hunter society. Most of us are just blown away in the wind and forgotten.
While I stand there staring at the sky, watching the clouds creep in, Kurt leans against the nearest marble tombstone and lights a cigarette. He doesn’t press me, just stays as a presence nearby, although he’s so still he might as well be a shadow.
Lorianna is waiting for me back at her place. There’s no doubt she’s woken up by now wondering where I am. This time, I left a note so she’ll know I plan to be back tonight, and we can talk more then. Although I wish I could have been with her this morning, Ivan’s funeral was mandatory attendance for me.
Fucking Ivan.
He disapproved of Lorianna from the beginning, even just as a target to get intel from. Too pretty and innocent, he claimed. A distraction. He knew I wanted her as more than a fuck, which is probably why he was an asshole the entire time about everything related to her.
I don’t regret standing up for myself about her. Not even a little.
And I hate to say it, but now that Ivan is gone, I have a chance to be with Lorianna without him getting in my way. His voice grumbles in the back of my mind, reminding me how selfish and dangerous it is to find myself romantically entangled with a woman in the kind of life we lead, but I don’t care.
I understand his concerns on a visceral level; although Ivan had more intimate memories of Aurelius murdering his wife and daughter, my parents were also taken from me. I’m not like Ivan, so damaged by the loss of my loved ones that I’m willing to go the rest of my life without love. I need Lorianna to balance everything out. Her smile reminds me every day of what I’m fighting so fucking hard for.
The first drops of rain patter down, one striking my face and streaking down my face, others coating the grass around me. Kurt tilts his head to the sky, letting the rain hit him straight on while he smokes.
I know the life I want won’t be easy; I can’t ignore my genetically engineered instincts, with almost a thousand years of my species’ history, to hunt our mortal enemies. I’ll always have that drive to hunt, and I can’t ever see myself settling down to work something as mundane as an office job where the stakes aren’t as high as life and death.
But I’ll find a way to make it work. For Lorianna.
I have to tell her all this. My plans, my thoughts, where the future could take us—how my job could try to keep us apart. She should be given the chance to make the right choice for herself, but I don’t want to scare her away before I even have the chance to make her fully mine again. Last night feels like it was so long ago it might as well be a dream, but I let the sounds she made while she came in my mouth to the ministrations of my lips, tongue, and fingers ring in my ears as a reminder of what every night could look like if I pull this off.
I have the picture-perfect idealized life in my head, and she’s right in the middle of it all. Without her, the rest of it doesn’t fucking matter anyway.
I’m an asshole, too. Don’t I know I learned from the best one of all?
Just hours ago, I promised Lorianna absolute honesty, and here I am, ready to break that promise to keep her. There’s so much I haven’t told her, though, that I can feed her pieces of information until I have no choice but to give her the rest, too. By then, I hope we’ll be in a better place.
I interpret our more recent intimacy as a positive reception of my return to her life, but it’s baby steps from here on out. First things first, going all the way back to the beginning… the real reason Ivan adopted me and the witch Solairé, who plucked me out of that Polish orphanage and told me what I was and who I was destined to become.
Half the reason I’ve worked so fucking hard every day of my life to get to where I am.
After all this, Lorianna is my reward. I know it.
The rain thickens, drenching my hair and pattering down my face and neck, leaking into my shirt. Wind buffets against my jacket, but I’m more surefooted than a tree, standing motionless on the edge of a storm.
Kurt jumps from his perch on the tombstone and strides next to me, the bottom of his trench coat dragging over the grass. “I know that look on your face. God gave you another chance at life. What will you do with it, brother?”
My lips twist. “Ivan expected perfection from me, and perfect was never good enough. Even now, I can hear his disapproval ringing in my head, seething at me for standing by at his memorial like pussy without any bite.”
“Sounds like our fuckin’ Admiral.”
“But I’m not just standing around doing nothing. I’m thinking. Making a plan. And when all’s said and done, I’ll destroy Aurelius with my bare fucking hands if I have to.”
Kurt smirks and takes a long drag of his cigarette, then puffs out a cloud of smoke. “Tell me what you need done, brother.”
A wicked grin spreads across my face when I think of ramming a stake into Alex’s heart, disintegrating that bastard to ash before he gets his bloodstained hands all over Lorianna and her fragile heart. Then, shortly after that, Enzo will fall next.
“I’m going to take my place as the next Admiral.”